What Are Crucible Events?

How do these promote leader development?

A crucible event is any sort of challenging experience or leadership failure that leads to some transformation in the leader and promotes positive leadership development.

John Gardner, founder of Common Cause and author of On Leadership, said that the training that he received from the United States Marine Corps during World War II was a crucible experience for him, setting him on a path of leadership.

Mahatma Gandhi was thrown off of a South African train because of his Indian heritage and it inspired him to fight racial discrimination against Indians living in South Africa. It caused him to dedicate his life to fighting against injustice.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen had a disastrous first business, Traf-O-Data, but used the failure of that enterprise to learn lessons that helped in the success of their next business — Microsoft.

For Development: When you think back on your development as a leader, can you point to any crucible events that accelerated your leader development? This might have been a failure, some memorable challenge, or some notable experience that caused you to pause, reflect, and, perhaps, changed the course of how you led going forward. How might you use such crucible events going forward in your leader development?